IN LIVING COLOUR

THERE IS A new app – in fact, there are probably several – which shows you how to take travel photographs. This isn’t just useful advice. You click on a photo you like, and the app shows you the exact setting you need to reproduce it – and the GPS coordinates you’ll need to plant your feet in exactly the right place.

I learned about this in a Wired article by the photography writer Laura Mallonee, entitled Why We All Take the Same Travel Photos.

As the editor of a travel-focused magazine, I do indeed see many of the same photographs of the same views. That may be why, over recent years, we’ve commissioned more and more illustrators to interpret our stories.

You lose something with illustration: namely, a literal representation of the place you might consider visiting. But a great illustration can convey a sense of place in more vivid and individual ways. Take creative director Steve Ellul’s cover image of our newest destination, Ishikawa. There’s no point giving you GPS coordinates for that view, because that view doesn’t exist. But as a guide to the colours, sights and atmosphere of this enchanting region of Japan, it offers something strikingly different.

Our passion for the artform caught the attention of Jonathan Jay Lee, professor of illustration at the Savannah College of Art and Design Hong Kong. He wondered if we’d be interested in giving one of our travel stories to a group of his students to work with. We were: and in Tamsin Cocks’ epic and dreamlike voyage to the remote spice islands of Indonesia, we had the perfect subject. See her story brought to life by the students’ interpretation of it above and on page 54; while our Ishikawa feature – with photographs, this time – is on page 32.

Mark Jones Editorial director